The 16-Hour 'Instant' Message

On August 16, 1858, the world witnessed the 19th-century version of a 'buffering' wheel. Queen Victoria sent the first official transatlantic telegraph to U.S. President James Buchanan Britannica. While hailed as a miracle of modern science, the message—a polite 98-word congratulatory note—took a grueling 16 hours to transmit KidsKonnect. That is roughly one word every ten minutes! Buchanan’s reply took another 10 hours to get back. Unfortunately, the connection was so poor that the cable fried itself and stopped working just three weeks later, proving that even in the 1800s, the internet was prone to crashing.